Woman pleads guilty to 'stupid' fraud

The way Bridgette Buckner told the story, her husband was an FBI agent who was mortally wounded in the line of duty in 2008.

The Bartlett resident provided details of his death to a security official investigating her claim on a $15,000 death benefit.

What Buckner didn’t know was that the official himself had once worked for the FBI.

“If this (shooting) did happen, I would have heard,” the agent told Buckner, according to a DuPage County prosecutor.

Buckner’s husband -– from whom she has been estranged for years -- wasn’t an agent nor was he dead, authorities determined, and Buckner was arrested. Today she pleaded guilty to criminal charges and faces up to seven years in prison.

Buckner, 50, pleaded to two counts of insurance fraud and a count of wire fraud, involving the claim for her purported dead husband and what was discovered to have been an earlier false claim involving a daughter on whom she had collected a $10,000 death benefit. It is unclear if the daughter ever existed, but certainly not in recent years as claimed, according to DuPage County Assistant State’s Attorney Helen Kapas Erdman.

Buckner’s tale began to unravel while she was being interviewed by the director of corporate security for Health Care Services Corp. of Aurora. In March 2008, she had taken a job with Hallmark Services Corp., a division of Health Care Services, and had purchased life insurance of her husband and daughter in April 2008.

Buckner filed for a death benefit from the company on April 30, 2008, claiming her daughter died earlier that month, and she was given $10,000 after producing what turned out to be a false Cook County death certificate. The $10,000 check was issued by Fort Dearborn Life Insurance Company.

“Her fellow employees sent her flowers and later that summer she took time off, claiming the death left her heartbroken,” said Kapas Erdman.

Then on Sept. 25, 2008 she filed a claim for $15,000 death benefit, claiming her husband died on Sept. 17, 2008.

“There was no obituary and company officials grew suspicious,” Kapas Erdman said.

Buckner, of the 500 block of Rose Lane, told the investigator her husband was shot in the lungs in the line of duty somewhere along Roosevelt Road and that he died waiting for surgery at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood.

Authorities believe Buckner’s estranged husband had no knowledge of the scheme.

After admitting submitting the false death claims, she told investigators she was “just stupid. I don’t know why I did it.”